1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a package such as a hard container or an envelope made of a packaging material such as a film or a sheet for packaging a number of stacked sheets of tissue paper or wet tissues and, more particularly, to a package which can be formed compactly as a whole and allows the stacked sheets to be taken out reliably one by one, and also to a process for manufacturing said package.
2. Prior Art
In the stacked sheets of the prior art such as the tissue paper or wet tissues to be sequentially taken out, each of the sheets is folded into halves, and the end portions of the sheets are overlapped in such a staggered manner that the face of the valley of one two-folded sheet is overlapped on the face of the valley of another two-folded sheet. The numerous stacked sheets thus overlapped are packaged either in a box-shaped container made of paper or plastics or in a envelope made of a packaging material such as a resin film.
The container or the envelope is opened to form an outlet so that when a sheet is pulled out from this outlet, the end portion of the next sheet is dragged out of the outlet by the preceding sheet. As a result, the sheets can be sequentially taken out one by one from the outlet.
In the box tissues of the prior art, however, the stacked sheets are accommodated in a flat position in the container so that the top plan area of the container is increased to enlarge the container itself and to make it inconvenient to transport and handle the container.
Thus, in Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 6-45381, for example, there is disclosed a technique in which the stacked sheets of tissue paper to be sequentially taken out are packaged in a corrugated state in a container.
According to this disclosure, the stacked sheets having a rectangular top plan are deformed by pressing them in a shorter side direction. Then, a recess formed in a corrugated shape is directed to an outlet side of the container so that the sheets can be sequentially taken out.
However, the aforementioned package for the stacked sheets in a corrugated shape has the following defects.
When the stacked sheets are not deformed and take a flat shape, they usually have a rectangular top plan shape, in which the longer side extends in parallel with a fold of each sheet and the shorter side extends in the direction perpendicular to the fold. Then, the stacked sheets are corrugated to reduce the size of the shorter side so that the appearance gives almost the same impression as before, not small-sized, because the size of the longer side of the rectangle is left long. Rather, the top plan rectangular shape comes emphasized because the size of the shorter side is far smaller than that of the longer side, and the height is enlarged to make the container of place type unstable.
In Unexamined Published Japanese Utility Model Application No. 63-28680, on the other hand, there is disclosed a container in which the stacked sheets deformed into a U-shape are contained. However, these stacked sheets have the following defects.
The stacked sheets are deformed into such a U-shape that the two end portions of the individual stacked sheets at the short side are arranged to confront the take-out face of the container. This remarkably increases the height of the container.
The stacked sheets are wholly bent into a U-shape to have a large height, as described above, so that a recess of the U-shaped stacked sheets is made so deep as to elongate the distance between the outlet of the container and the bottom of the recess. This makes it necessary to raise a next sheet from the bottom of the deep recess when each sheet is taken out one by one from the outlet. As a result, the next sheet may be unable to be protruded from the outlet.